Aoki wins prize for his comparisons of economic institutions

Masahiko Aoki, the Takahashi Professor of Japanese Studies at Stanford, has been selected to receive the sixth Schumpeter Prize from the International Joseph A. Schumpeter Society in Vienna.

Aoki, who directs Stanford's comparative institutions program within the department of economics, was selected for the prize, based on the manuscript for his upcoming book from MIT Press, Toward a Comparative Institutional Analysis. Employing game theory, the book examines the reasons behind the diversity of institutional arrangements, such as those for banking regulation and corporate governance, in different countries.

The prize, which carries a cash award of 10,000 ECU, is given every two years to recognize a recent scholarly contribution related to the work of Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian-born Harvard professor known for his work on entrepreneurship, innovation, democracy and capitalism, and the history of economic thought. The society received an endowment from Wirtschaftswoche, the German economics and business weekly, for the prize, and decided the prize this year should go to a work related to capitalism and democracy in the next century

Aoki, who is best known for his past prize-winning works comparing the strengths and weaknesses of industrial organization in Japan and the United States, now works with other scholars and students on comparing economic institutions across a broad spectrum of countries. He is also currently director of a think tank affiliated with Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry and has suggested a number of institutional reforms to government and industry officials there.

The award will be presented to him during the society's world congress in Vienna June 13 to 16.